cruising around the internet i see furutech is selling fuses of the gold variety fot $42 a pop. what is up? worth it? why are they doing this? my local ratshack guy tells me that interconnects and speaker cables that terminate in gold fittings are a waste of time and money. he says that those of us willing to spend for gold are just buying for appearance. you must remember that we are at the end of the world here(literally). i do not go into his store anymore but i still wonder about gold fuses. after all, all the current in the unit must pass through the fuse, right? what? don pettit, long beach, washington

Yes, People are always looking for short cuts... It's the old audio tweaks industry fueled by passionate audiophiles who if they had spend that money on room treatment, they would have been way ahead.

For example, here is a plot of my loudspeakers at a distance of 1 foot away (blue line) and then at the listening chair about 7 feet away (green line). My room is only 1/2 done... Meaning it's better than the average room and not as good as it will be. Even so, the response is FAR from perfect... Perhaps some magic pebbles taped onto my interconnects would help... Maybe if I gold plated my ears, I wouldn't have to gold plate all my audio gear, I mean think about it...

Fidelity is limited by the weakest link in the audio chain and that includes your room. Never will any of these tweaks have any effect on the room response shown above. The room response (what you hear) is the weakest link.

Picture a guy with a chain stretched between two points and one of the links in the middle is cracked and will certainly break if any more tension is put on the chain. His solution? Put some paint on the links to make them prettier.

steve, i certainly agree with and abide by everything i hear you say. however space and dimensions of my listening room make treating it pointless. no symmetry, no matching walls, no place to locate treatment materials. that said if i did have a room to work with i would take all the pointers you discuss and begin to improve because i currently have three pieces of decware and have on order a taboo. your products are the best bang for the buck audio experience of which i know. however i do notice that a great deal of decware gear has gold plating in places where conductance might be an issue. would it be a good idea for this step to be discontinued? gotta be a significant expense. respectfully, don pettit, long beach, washington

The dimesnions of my home recording studio room are pretty bad, too (10x12x8). However, I use nearfield monitoring (about 30'' away from the speakers, with me and the speakers forming roughly an equilateral triangle) -- and that really helps minimize the effect of the room.

In Steve's graph below, I bet the response at 2-1/2 feet would have looked significantly better than at 7 feet.

Having said that, I user IK Multimedia/Audyssey's Advanced Room Correction software (with my digital audio workstation) to counteract some of the room's bad dips and resonances.

But even without that software engaged, I get a greatly detailed holographic audio image with my new SE84C+ (using a nuforce Icon HDP as a pre-amp) driving PMC TB2S+ speakers. But I'm pretty sure it would be a different story if I didn't use nearfield monitoring. It gives me the detail of great headphones, but with a great frontal soundstage. Highly recommended.

Sorry folks but I've had great results using aftermarket IsoClean fuses on several other components over the last couple of years and I may pop one of the new HiFi tuning silver/gold black jobs into my DecWare amp.

Way back when, the Audio Critic wrote about how much sonic degradation fuses can make.I took him up and replaced the fuses in my speakers with solid wire, and did the same with the speaker protection fuse.

The results were positive, less grain, a smoother more relaxed sound, if this was snake oil, fill the tank.

Anyway when the "improved" fuses came out I figured for a few bucks what's the harm?I'll only know if I try them,and at least my speakers etc will now have some type of protection.

Well the riddicule I recieved from all the Aczel zealots(he switched sides and become the audio myth buster)who said it just couldn't be so,was the fodder for a lengthy series of debates.

Some folks are stubborn,there is a lot of misconceptions,like there is if you tell someone that a 2 watt amp outperforms a 1000 watt amp.Someone's always going to say "it can't be so, prove it to me".

For me everything makes a difference,and a more robust fuse in my mind is no different than a better well made anything ,be it a power cord, tube or fuse.

I never would have believed how much better my amp sounds after I replaced the stock rectifier with an old Sylvania, so why wouldn't a stock fuse be any different?

When I buy one I'll report my findings,but in all honesty, the only way to know is buy doing it also.

I don't think it's too big a leap of faith to make the investment.Overpriced ,well hell ya, but,if it adds more to the fun I am having then what's the harm?

I must admit, when I had this same conversation with a friend of mine, he said, 'if it makes em happy, let it go'. So, I guess I do understand that the guy sitting next to me at the stop light, in the purple Honda, with his music cranked and a smile on his face has the same right as anyone else. Just ask him, and he will tell you just how great his system is. If you were to show him a better(read accurate) way, then he would just laugh. I mean no insult here, but rather to say that this ultimately is about our interpretation of enjoyment of the hobby, just as long as we don't try to apply it to space travel, where physics doesn't care about your opinion... ::)